Unknown World Of Pesticides

August 23, 1985|By Yellow

It's alarming to realize that the pesticide dicofol used on about 150,000 acres of Florida citrus contains DDT -- a chemical outlawed nationally 13 years ago. This latest DDT problem shows how little is known about many of the chemicals Florida allows on crops.

While dicofol has been used for almost 30 years to control mites, the federal Environmental Protection Agency didn't learn of its high DDT content until recently. EPA made that finding when it went back to review 600 ingredients in 45,000 products it approved years ago before it started demanding exhaustive tests. What EPA learned is that dicofol contained up to 15 percent DDT and related chemicals.

DDT was banned for good reason. It remains in the environment for years. In birds such as Florida's brown pelican, DDT caused the animal to lay thin- shelled eggs that often broke before hatching. That threatened the pelican with extinction. Scientists now have found high levels of DDT residues in alligator eggs in Lake Apopka and are trying to determine if it's DDT that is causing some eggs to be sterile and others to produce deformed baby gators.

It's no wonder that the EPA suggested banning dicofol until the manufacturer could bring the DDT content down to minuscule levels that are safe. The threat of the ban has had a good effect. The manufacturer promised to reduce DDT levels to safe trace levels by 1987.

EPA now is leaning against the ban because scientists have found no conclusive evidence that dicofol is significantly increasing the amount of DDT in the environment. But if evidence surfaces, the ban should be imposed. If not, the reduction to trace levels is fair. What's important is that there be no DDT contamination.

Florida must be more aggressive in controlling pesticides. Every year, the state Department of Agriculture registers about 400 agricultural pesticides. But it knows too little about their ingredients and their effects. Rather than doing its own studies, the state has relied on EPA to do them. If the feds said the product was safe, it was okay for Florida. That may not be so bad for pesticides coming on the market today and undergoing thorough EPA tests, but it's a problem for chemicals such as dicofol that were approved years ago. EPA did too little testing too late.

Fortunately, starting next year the Agriculture Department will require all companies to tell the state the ingredients in their pesticides before they are registered. And it will do more testing of those pesticides to see their effect on Florida's fragile environment. It decided to change the policy after the state's scare with EDB, a pesticide linked to cancer.

The key will be in sticking with these practices even when scares over specific pesticides have quieted. In some cases that will mean being tougher than Washington. But there's nothing wrong with that. When it comes to protecting the environment, Florida should be the leader.